But instead it turned into a game of "hodl" to get rich.
Scams were openly perpetrated in the forums.
I became completely disillusioned. What exactly does bitcoin offer the world today?
Aside from perhaps gold, bitcoin is the most successful currency in the world not associated with a central bank and state.
It's the most liquid asset that is not issued by a central bank. At any point you can issue a transaction to anyone else in the world, without the possibility of a third party intervention. I've had issues pulling cash out of banks, or limited sizes available for money orders, or having debt/credit card transactions incorrectly flagged as fraudulent and blocked.
Calling it a currency is a huge stretch. It’s an extremely successful token/“asset” but it’s about as much as a currency as gold is these days if not less (based on what most people use it for).
I would say that much of the reason for that is because of the perception of the currency that is widely held. It's not much good because people think it's not much good. I bought a few things online years ago with Bitcoin and it worked pretty much the way it should, but most of those places that accepted it stopped . Mostly they stopped due to the public perception.
I do wonder if it has a chance to become useful once it is old enough to not be considered interesting, and the idea of holding something while it increases in value dies.
I mean if somebody accepts precious metals, jewels etc. as payment in lieu of actual money that doesn’t mean those things suddenly become a currency.
Even if you can pay for stuff with bitcoin it’s not a currency until people actually start setting prices based on it.
> liquid enough
I’m sure I could find people who would accept Apple’s stock in lieu of actual money, that wouldn’t make it a currency